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Thousands in Ohio still wait for unemployment help

Christina Stevenson has a three-prong plan for financial success -- for now and in the future.

Her primary business is styling hair in Northwest Akron’s Tru Cream Beauty Bar, where she rents a chair and is self-employed.

Her side business -- which she opened after seeing a need at the salon -- is making wigs. She runs that from fifth-floor office space she rents in downtown Akron’s Evans Building.

And her third business, her dream, is still in the works. She’s a junior studying chemical engineering at the University of Akron. When Stevenson graduates, she wants to partner with other chemical engineers to help salons launch their own cosmetic lines.

But in March, just as she turned 29 years old, all of it screeched to a halt as Ohio officials began shutting down the state to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The pandemic -- which has so far killed 1,021 Ohioans and more than 66,000 Americans -- not only upended nearly every aspect of our daily lives, it’s also exposed gaping holes in the safety nets that are supposed to protect U.S. workers like Stevenson during tough times.

Stevenson has been out of work for more than six weeks, yet she has yet to receive any unemployment compensation.

She, like millions of other Americans who are self-employed, independent contractors or gig workers, doesn’t qualify for traditional unemployment.

And the emergency federal unemployment aid that is supposed to help workers like her -- Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA -- won’t be available in Ohio until some time after mid-May.

“Everything I was sure of, I’m no longer sure of,” Stevenson said last week. “I always told myself that my wig business was my fall-back plan. In times like these, I can’t even fall back on my fall-back plan.”

Help for new economy

About six weeks into Ohio’s pandemic shut down, more than 1.1 million Ohioans -- or about 18 percent of the workforce -- have filed for unemployment benefits. The numbers have overwhelmed the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services’ computer system and staff, which is trying to process as many claims in six weeks as they usually do over more than two years.

Though state officials said they are starting to catch up, numbers released Thursday showed Ohio so far paid out more than $1.45 billion to about 481,000 claimants, less than half of those who applied.

And none of those paid include people like Stevenson, who are waiting on federally funded PUA.

Amanda Weinstein, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Akron, said state unemployment systems haven’t evolved to reflect how Americans work.

If you would have asked our grandparents about work in the 1950s, they would have said people go to work at a single employer and have a 9-5 job,” she said. “That’s what our safety-net system is set up for.”

Today, however, people are working just as many hours, or even more, but they’re doing it in a gig economy, filled with short-term contracts, part-time jobs, freelance and other jobs they have created for themselves, she said.

“That economy existed before the pandemic, but we really didn’t think a lot about what would happen to Uber or Lyft drivers if they were not covered (by unemployment),” she said.

COVID-19 forced policy makers to confront the changing way we work, she said.

Economists warned the pandemic would have a devastating impact on employment. “They said we really need to get money into the hands of people who need it now,” she said.

There is a moral argument: People need to be able to buy food and to pay rent, Weinstein said. But there is an economic argument, too.

“If people stop buying coloring books or other things because they have no money, the larger economy stops,” she said.

Congress in late March passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, which boosted traditional unemployment payments by $600 per week and created PUA, an equivalent safety net for nearly everyone else.

In the weeks since, rents, mortgages and car payments came due. People, many who were already financially struggling, still needed to eat.

And yet hundreds of thousands of Ohioans continue to wait on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.

From two jobs to none

Malinda Breiding Fernandez and her husband, who live in Stark County’s Perry Township, split their family budget like this: She pays for fuel, groceries and their two daughters’ music lessons and Irish dancing, which involves classes, costumes and travel to competitions across the country.

He pays for everything else.

When the pandemic struck, Fernandez’s husband kept working. His construction job in Kent was deemed essential.

But Fernandez -- who was a full-time social worker for 13 years, until her children were born -- lost both streams of income she put together after he daughters, now 12 and 7, were old enough to go to school.

Fernandez worked four to five days a week as a substitute teacher at Perry schools, earning $90 per day. On weekends, she also worked one or two nights at a nearby Shady Hollow Country Club, earning more than $100 each shift.

When the schools and the country club closed amid the pandemic, Fernandez immediately applied for traditional unemployment and began a long and unsatisfying journey that’s led her to a wait for PUA.

Trouble began when she first filed, Fernandez said. The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (ODJFS) system said her name didn’t match her Social Security number.

Fernandez scanned in copies of her birth certificate and Social Security card and sent digital copies to ODJFS and soon after received a second notice from ODJFS seeking the same information, she said.

“This was crazy. I was born and raised in Ohio and they don’t know who I am?” she asked.

Fernandez said she scanned the documents and sent them in again.

But it wouldn’t matter. She said her weekly claims were denied.

Fernandez repeatedly tried to reach someone at ODJFS for help, but couldn’t get through, she said.

The ODJFS computer system wasn’t helpful, either. Last week, more than a month after she applied, Fernandez said she could only access four of the 12 correspondence notices ODJFS posted to her account. When she clicked on the others, there was nothing there.

Late last month, when ODJFS began pre-registering people for PUA who didn’t qualify for unemployment, Fernandez said she tried to sign up.

When she followed the PUA prompts, the ODJFS system told her she was eligible.

“However, it says I can’t file because I have an old claim pending,” she said, laughing in exasperation.

She fears the ODJFS traditional unemployment system is now at cross-purposes with the state’s new PUA system.

“I just think it’s one big mess,” Fernadez said. END OPTIONAL TRIM

Looking for assistance

Stevenson, the cosmetologist working on her chemical engineering degree, expressed similar frustration.

Last month, someone text messaged her a screenshot of a telephone number and said it was a secret, direct line into ODJFS.

“I was scared to call it, but I was desperate, too,” Stevenson said.

“When I called, it immediately clicked on to hold music and I got excited, like I was finally getting somewhere.”

About 30 minutes later, a man answered and asked for her Social Security number.

Stevenson said she took a chance: She told him the digits without telling him her name. A few moments later, after presumably typing in her information into a computer, the man called Stevenson by her full name, she said, and she figured he was legitimate.

After reviewing Stevenson’s information, the man told her she was ineligible for traditional unemployment because she’s self-employed, but would be eligible for federal PUA.

“He was reading off of a sheet and told me the PUA system would be set up some time in May and that I would be getting a payment in July,” Stevenson said.

She’s since tried to call back for more information, but said the number no longer works.

On Thursday, after the Beacon Journal started reporting on Stevenson and Fernandez, ODJFS reached out to the women to resolve their issues. ODJFS cannot comment on the women’s cases because of federal law, a spokesman said.

But the women said ODJFS representatives walked each of them through the system and confirmed each could qualify for PUA payments, which will be backdated to the time they were out of work.

Payments could begin as early as mid-May, as soon as Ohio’s PUA system is up and running and they can upload the necessary paperwork, including proof of income, according to ODJFS.

‘Something has to give’

“But we’re not shopping right now,” she said. “We’re trying not to go anywhere so we can save on gas”.

And the family has stopped ordering restaurant food.

“Not because we’re afraid (of catching COVID-19), but because we’re trying to save money,” she said. “I cook every meal, every day and we used to go out at least once a week.”

Fernandez, meanwhile, landed a job making $8.80 an hour at a Giant Eagle helping with curbside delivery. She works about 18 to 20 hours a week and brings home about $400 a week less than she did when she was substitute teaching and working at the country club, she said.

She said she’s grateful for the job, though, because there are too many desperate people scrambling for too few jobs during the pandemic.

At Giant Eagle, Fernandez said she works alongside others whose jobs suddenly ended, including a paralegal and someone who had worked for a cardiologist for 20 years.

“I’m proud of just being able to work, to find a job,” Fernandez said.

Stevenson is living off of her savings for now and trying to generate some new income by becoming a certified Medicaid provider of wigs for people who have lost their hair due to medical conditions like lupus.

The owner of the salon where she works has so far waived her chair rental fee during the pandemic closure. And Stevenson lives with family who have been able to work from home since the pandemic began, so she doesn’t worry about rent.

But Stevenson said she was deep into the process of buying her own home when the pandemic began and she doesn’t know how that can move forward.

And she still has expenses, including a car payment, insurance, rent at her downtown wig business and tuition at UA.

If Stevenson gets certified by Medicaid, she’ll be considered an essential business during the pandemic. When physicians write prescriptions for patients with hair loss -- they’re called cranial prosthesis instead of wigs -- Stevenson could fill them with handmade, custom wigs.

“I have to figure out something,” Stevenson said. “Something has to give.”

The pandemic, she said, is both frightening and disorienting and has forced her to think much of what she once assumed about money, health and the future.

In December, Stevenson started binge-watching the post-apocalyptic zombie show “The Walking Dead.”

“Everything they could count on, everything they were sure of, everything they put their trust in -- the government, the supply of food or anything -- was wiped out,” Stevenson said.